The Other Day

"The other day," said the ent, shaking his branches only slightly, to dislodge a family of wood pigeons who had been scratching at him for the last fifty years, "I saw the most unusual thing."

"Oh," replied his comrade, stretching his trunk with a dull creak.

"A man," the first ent explained, "with the top of him – his head would you call it? – covered in feathers. Climbed up into my branches whilst I was contemplating how long it had been since we last saw elves in this forest. He seemed to be hiding from something, but before I could ask him why, in all decency, he had chosen to scale my body uninvited, two more came up to join him! The very thought of it! Then four more rampaged around the place, racing and hurrying and making such a fuss, calling out something about a ‘Commonwealth’. They did not even notice me."

"There is no need for that," agreed the second, scowling in his own, slow way as a pair of young humans danced around a nearby tree, exchanging kisses and posies of flowers, finally pausing to carve symbols in the bark. "No respect. Not like the men of old, or the few we knew at least. These are more like Orcs."

"Like orcs," concurred the first ent.

The young lovers had danced out of the wood. Winter fell, and thawed. A good deal of the forest seemed to disappear all of a sudden with a great howl of unnatural things that neither ent saw, nor wanted to see. The world aged and the forest shrank as the two beings contemplated the incident of the warring humans.

"What do you suppose that was?" asked the second ent, as outside the wood, where now a long, straight patch of grey road stretched across the countryside, a rattling cart of metal passed with a loud hooting of horns and a puff of foul-smelling smoke. Its goggled, leather-headed rider gave the ents but the slightest of glances as he hurtled past, travelling, at the very least, at five miles an hour.

"More ‘new orcs’," sighed the first, having fully assimilated the strange image into his mind, though more passed, and they grew faster and louder, until the world outside the forest seemed to be filled with them and their rumbling. Sleek shapes, silver, black and deep red, moved so fast by the dwindling forest that the ents had barely time to take them in. "I expect that is some new beast of war. They are always at war, men and orcs. The other day, I saw two whole armies march through this wood. Said something about fighting over roses. I ask you – fighting over roses? When have they ever bothered with flowers, except to pick them? Or trees, except to cut them down and burn them? Or anything alive, unless it can be killed? But roses give them some excuse for war, and that is all that matters to them. That’s all they can see. Never notice anything else."

The second ent paid little attention to his friend’s monologue. He felt rather bad for this, but his mind had been drawn to the sudden appearance of large birds in the sky, which he could see through the sparse and thinning canopy. The first ones dropped eggs to the ground, which burst into flame as soon as they landed. This intrigued the ent, but he agreed that it was probably something to do with war, as he vaguely heard his friend suggest. Then as the speech continued, the birds rose higher in the sky, grew larger, and seemed to give up this idea of setting the earth on fire with their eggs. They were not giant eagles, however, the ent decided. He hadn’t seen one of those for…well he could not remember how long.

Nothing now remained of the forest, save the two ents and a few very old trees clumped together in the middle of a wide, flat field, through which large metal beasts often chugged and spat out bails of hay like furballs. The ents paused for a few years in their discussion to watch this, hoping that these machines would not venture too close.

"If only they stopped to think," the second ent resumed finally, wondering why a young human in a colourful robe and bright beads suddenly wanted to hug him. Some others sang and danced around him. It became very irritating after a while. "Then they might appreciate things. But men are not like elves, who live as long as Arda, and they have no time to stop and think, or so they believe. They speed around and change things and try to fill their little lives with all they can, so quickly that they do not notice the things they trample."

When the group of singing, hugging humans grew too irritating, after a couple of years, the ent subtly bashed one on the head with a low hanging branch and hoped the others would get the message.

The first ent watched the stream of colourful metal shapes whizzing past on the great grey road with its tall, white lanterns that made the night orange-grey and killed the stars. "No time," he breathed, with great sadness in his voice, "to notice anything."

The ents chuckled mirthlessly, (which was a strange sound that no being other than an ent would recognise as laughter), and contemplated the small group of humans now stringing ropes between their branches, clambering over them and over the trees, shouting something about ‘saving the ancient forest’ and waving bits of painted wood on sticks. It was a great imposition on the ents, who were trying to have a conversation, but the humans seemed to have made themselves very comfortable up there. And neither ent could miss the irony of these young humans, shouting about the rights of the forest and of nature, when none of them noticed the two talking creatures on which they were sitting.

"Do you think they will cut us down too?" asked the second ent sadly, as men in dark clothes pulled the others down from the trees, and some of those great chomping machines edged frighteningly close to the little clump of trees in the middle of the field.

"I often think," replied the other, but whatever he wanted to say disappeared beneath the whining of machines. None of the humans, of course, noticed.